Conservative ruling party candidate Felipe Calderon won Mexico's ferociously contested July 2 presidential election, the country's top electoral court said in a preliminary ruling on Tuesday.

The court's seven judges still must to vote on the draft decision later in the day and decide whether the election was clean, but they were widely expected to confirm Calderon's narrow victory over his leftist rival Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who claims the vote was rigged against him.

The draft, drawn up by two of the seven magistrates, said Calderon had a winning margin of almost 234,000 votes.

That is around 10,000 votes less than the original margin of victory and follows recounts at around 9 percent of polling stations and the annulment of some ballot boxes.

The court's rulings cannot be appealed but Lopez Obrador has no intention of giving up his fight to overturn the election result.

Backed by supporters who have blockaded central Mexico City for the past month, the leftist former mayor of the capital says he will never recognize Calderon as president and has vowed to set up a parallel government.

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